On March 7, CNN’s Brian Stelter was the first to report on a script for the promotional messages being sent to Sinclair’s 193 stations — a pending merger with Tribune could bring that number as high as 233.

Stelter’s story at CNN Money ran under the headline: “Sinclair’s new media-bashing promos rankle local anchors.” Stelter included sample portions of the script, which featured anchors saying they and their stations were concerned about “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country.”

Stelter and others like Deadspin have read the promotional message as a statement of support for President Trump’s attacks on mainstream media outlets that criticize him.

“The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories,” the anchors say. “This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.”

Scott Livingston, senior vice president of news for Hunt Valley-based Sinclair, said the goal of the messages was to reiterate Sinclair’s “commitment to reporting facts.”

“The stories we are referencing in this promo are the unsubstantiated ones (i.e. fake/false) like ‘Pope Endorses Trump’ which move quickly across social media and result in an ill-informed public,” he wrote in an email response to the Sun.

“Some other false stories, like the fake ‘Pizzagate’ story, can result in dangerous consequences,” he continued. “We are focused on fact-based reporting. That's our commitment to our communities. That’s the goal of these announcements: to reiterate our commitment to reporting facts in a pursuit of truth. We consider it our honor and privilege to deliver the news each night. We seek the truth and strive to be fair.”